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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The media, complain Do It Yourselfers, often get dumpster divers wrong, believing that they are not just using what's left over, but stealing from large corporations as a way to put a wrench in the capitalist machinery. This has been particularly true since the publication of "Evasion," a picaresque memoir of a young Do It Yourselfer that also is a how-to manual in shoplifting.
The fact is, however, that most of the people trying to live outside consumption oppose theft. As Chubba explains it, "Theft still falls under the category of 'creating a demand' ... When something is taken off the shelf of a lot of corporate grocery stores, there isn't a difference between the space created by stealing it or the space created by purchasing the product ... there is just a space. A space dictating a call for more of the very same product."
Doing-it-yourself doctrine relies on a critique of capitalism as an immoral distribution of wealth, and on an anarchist-inspired call to action. According to Andy, a 28-year-old political puppeteer, dumpster diving and anti-consumerism more generally come out of a "wish not to participate in a 'work economy' or to participate in an economy that is causing a lot of misery." Instead, the waste of the miserable system is diverted to the miserable -- or whoever happens to be around when the bounty arrives.
"Last time I went to Burlington," says Andy, "I picked up three hitchhikers on the way home and sent them off with three boxes of food, all from dumpsters."
Dumpster divers also are siphoning off the one thing consumer capitalism cannot live without: waste. Without waste, consumer capitalism cannot charge for the luxury of the flawless tomato or the freshly baked bagel. According to Adam, there is "so much tied up in what I call the 'perfect capitalist vegetable.' If there's a blemish it's thrown out." Similarly, everything baked is tossed at the end of a day so that fresh things can be baked in the morning. In other words, without waste, conspicuous consumption becomes far less conspicuous.
Like most of those involved in diverting the waste stream to those in need, neither Adam nor Chubba grew up without food. Adam is from a fairly privileged family in Connecticut and went to college to study literature. Chubba was able to "travel and goof around" for years after high school and even go to art school for a while. But, as Chubba explains it, the more education he got, the more he didn't believe in the capitalist system as "a viable model for humanity to practice." Besides, he says, the process of diverting the waste stream is a politically ethical stand that also happens to be fun.
"The excess is not just a pear here and a case of tomato sauce there," he explains. "It is more food than you and your 20 friends know what to do with. I have had to solve such problems as: What do we do with seven cases of wrapped chocolate? Is there a recipe that calls for 100 red bell peppers? How many ice cream sandwiches does it take to give you a stomach ache or how many grilled cheese sandwiches will 15 loaves of bread, 30 tomatoes and 40 pounds of extra sharp Grafton cheese make?"
The idealism, if not the actual food and criminal activities, of such a movement is enough to turn some peoples' stomachs. It is difficult for even the most optimistic among us to believe that eating trash will actually have an impact on global capitalism, but it does have a cultural one. To eat "trash" is to go against our cultural consciousness, which imagines that food can be "tossed" from the realm of what can be safely seen and discussed into an abject state of invisibility and taboo. To consume the abject trash is to risk contamination and status as a fully civil human.
Eating trash turns my stomach, not just because I'm squeamish, but because I'm socialized into a culture that separates food from trash and humans into "deserving" and "revolting." Yet I find myself more attracted than repulsed by those who live off of and redistribute waste. It's not that I would actually eat out of the trash (I tried, I can't), but I know -- we all know -- that landfills should not be full of perfectly edible foodstuffs, and no one should ever go hungry. That there are some who structure their lives around this knowledge is inspiring and I am grateful. So grateful that I am tempted to join them. And probably will. Just not for dinner.
